Fed's QE 2 Threats Are Messing It All Up For Canada And Beyond

While WSJ took this to imply Flaherty was taking jabs at China, I can't help but think our friends up north are taking not-so-subtle stabs at us or, more specifically, our fearless Fed leader and his loyal band of monetary lemmings who are ready to hurl themselves off a cliff at the first sign of deflation.

Time to level the playing field and that means starting with pot and working our way down to kettle.

Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Monday that any further quantitative easing by the U.S. Federal Reserve will affect market-based currencies like the Canadian dollar.

His remarks come three days after U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke reinforced expectations for further action to boost the weak economy.

Flaherty said Canadian policy-makers are "always concerned about volatility" in the Canadian dollar.

"I know Mr. Bernanke has given some indications of the possibility of more quantitative easing in the United States. That affects our dollar, it affects the Australian dollar and the Brazilian real and all the free-trading currencies," Flaherty said after Question Period in Parliament. "So we monitor that and we watch that."

...

"We'll go back and look at world economic growth, we'll go back and look at the currency issues as well, particularly the currency issues relating to some of the Asian economies," he said. "I'm hopeful we can make some progress on that in terms of increased cooperation by all of us with respect to world currencies. This is important so that we avoid the kinds of retaliatory actions that nations can take, where they feel that they are aggrieved by the policies of particular countries."

Canada does have a chance to decouple and thrive if they play this right. Pending issues being, of course, the Canadian housing bubble that has yet to pop and the problem with the United States being their most excited customer when it comes to delish goods like timber and oil. (In case you guys didn't notice we haven't been gobbling up as much crap as we once did)